One of
the values of a collection of “new and selected poems,” in most cases featuring
the new poems at the front of the book, involves this intrigue, tracing
recurrent images and themes from the new poems back through the former ones.
Defeat and (bad pun with a drum roll and crash of cymbals) the feet (prominent
in the accents of an Irish lyricist), this haunts the muse of Tomas O’Leary
from the outset of the new book, In the Wellspring of the Ear (Lynx House
Press, 2015). For O’Leary characteristically adept at managing disappointments,
this first poem “House on the High Road” surprises and nearly troubles the
reader with tones of supplication, genuine remorse, and a plea of innocence on
behalf of the offering of words which, it is suggested, have breathed on the
first domino of a reaction that has gone awry (“the red treasure/Again on my
hands…the dogs burn for my own blood”). Were it not for language, and the
concentrated expressions of poetry, this grace of a medium for arbitration…

my intention

I swear was words only

A reasoned package to deliver her…

The
concentration delivering a phrase as fertile as “to deliver her” with its
possibilities—of a physical birth, from a spiritual dilemma, or as the content
of the parcel itself ?

The
“her” evoked first in the book and juxtaposed with the poet’s trek of humility—

High Lady low road

—remains
otherwise unspecified, and harkens back to a poem from a previous collection,
placed in section III of the new selected, “Love’s Virgin,” a tour-de-force of
brevity and choice, making its margins and silence resonant. This earlier
expression asserts the poet’s confidence with paradoxical terminology
(magnified in “emerald of slime”) for the ambiguous experiences with
inspiration, which James Joyce’s young Dedalus identified in the hot and cold
faucets of the hotel room sink, James Merrill as the “up and down” journeys of
the ski slopes. “Praise Death!” O’Leary exclaims, then more softly,

but leave a candle by
for Love:

Love’s Virgin, in her cove, keeps
costly love,

laying an altar cloth of emerald
slime

over the sacrificial face of time…

The
determined trochaic meter and chiming couplets are the phonic inheritance, or
Wellspring of the Ear, particularly of the folk of the isle of song and music.

As
anybody who has had the pleasure of meeting and talking with him would attest,
Tomas O’Leary’s manner and speech come across with enough Irish as to have you
wonder that he was in fact raised in Somerville—by Irish immigrants. While
sincere and gentle, O’Leary is full of character and wry humor tempering his
playful, musical bearing, as one of the new poems describes his father:

A genius of blather, a serious man
to boot…

“My
Father, My Sons” is a wonderful meditation on generations, preceding and
ongoing, with a hint of the poet’s awareness of mortality in time that has
passed, yet with the odd gift of memory that revives and retains his father’s
speech:

He died it seems almost forever ago,

yet here he is to tell me this:

“Sure eternity doesn’t take but a
day,

and day turns to day, and nothing
ever missed…

and in
the evocation of his sons and their inheritance of the genetic/cultural
wellspring, with a marvelous fairy-tale-like image of the deflected passage
from father to sons:

My sons, alive and well, have never
met

the old man who was father to their
old man,

the mythic fish who barely missed
their net.

He’s theirs, though, surely as he’s
mine.

Yeats
is unmistakably present in O’Leary’s diction; though it is Yeats only in that
Yeats widely embraced and appropriated the poetry of his nation’s speech, much
as Whitman did for 19th century America. It is admirable and astonishing that
O’Leary resists falling too mechanically into the stamped lyrical pattern very
often, though the tetrameter (four-beat) line autographs his verse even in the
poems lined in freer forms.

A good
deal of the notes taken down for this article won’t have space here. The reader
is left with much to discover, new and reorganized and presented anew. O’Leary
is seasoned, wise with his allowance of scope about his subjects yet subtly
poignant where he intends to be (notably in “Portrait of Alvarez” and “The
Pleasures of Mourning,” a relentless go at the decorum and delicacies of a
funeral wake). It will be one of the best collections from

a Cambridge
poet in 2015.

Tomas
O’Leary will appear with Greg Delanty to read at the second annual Seamus
Heaney Tribute, part of the Hastings Room Reading Series, on Wednesday August
26, 2015

at 7:00
pm, First Church Congregationalist, 11 Garden Street near Harvard Square.

In the
Wellspring of the Ear: New and Selected Poems/ISBN: 978-089924-143-2

by
Tomas O’Leary / is on sale for $19.95 / Lynx House PressSpokane, WA / www.lynxhousepress.org

Thursday, August 06, 2015

Interview with Somerville poet Afaa
Michael Weaver: A poet with a strong sense of responsibility.

By Doug Holder

Afaa Michael Weaver does not just write
pretty poetry. He pens poetry that addresses things like the recent
tragedies in Baltimore, South Carolina, Ferguson and elsewhere, where
African Americans were killed—victims of hate crimes, and
questionable actions of the police. His poetry does not consist of
rants, and hopefully his art is a potent catalyst for people to think
about injustice and change.

Weaver is a
recent winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize, and a Professor of
English at Simmons College. I had the pleasure to talk to him on my
Somerville Community Access TV show " Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer."

Doug Holder: You have written in
response to the hate crimes, etc... against African Americans across
the country. Recently The Somerville Times published a poem of yours
that dealt with the killing in Baltimore. Does the artist have a
responsibility in a time of social crisis?

Afaa Michael Weaver: I think he or she
does. It is a complicated situation—as we saw in Ferguson,
Baltimore, N.Y., etc...It is not always easy to write a poem in
response to these things. But I felt compelled to write one in
response to the situation in Charleston, where a young white man went
into an African American church, and killed folks in a prayer
meeting. We have to face facts about how influential we can be with
our work-- how influential our poems can be. We have to ask: “ How
can we move people?”I am always of the pinon that when I write a
poem, I try to write the best poem that I can. I try not to write a
poem that is political and that is a very difficult thing to do. It
could turn into a rant. With the poems I wrote in response to the
crisis, I tried to move people emotionally.

DH: You published a chapbook of poetry
“ A Hard Summation” (Central Square Press) that covers African
American history from the Middle Passage to the present day. How did
this project come about?

AFW: About 3 years ago I was asked by
friends in Wisconsin to write poems about African Americans. At the
time I was finishing up a draft of a memoir—so I decided to work on
a pocket-sized collection of poems about this subject. My friends in
Wisconsin are conservative Catholic, Republicans. We are part of an
international group of poets for peace. They are people that want to
bring together different spiritual and ethnic communities for the
common good. My friends didn't know much about African American
history, so I wrote a series of 13 poems with the intent of educating
and inspiring my friends. I wanted them to think about race and
racism. I knew they would uncover things that they never heard of. I
was afraid of how they would respond to the book—especially with
regard to slavery.

Not many people know very much about
slavery. Certain basic facts are not well known. There were two
periods to slavery. There was the Atlantic Slave Trade that went
right up until the 19th century when it was outlawed. When
the cotton industry boomed—the demand for labor was huge—so slave
owners, etc...got involved in breeding. The African American
population went from 800,000 to 4 million before and after the Civil
War. Slave pens were common on the city streets. Slaves were
considered to be animals. And part of the problem today is that
people are tied to this perception—and it is ingrained in the
language.

DH: How do you mean it is ingrained in
the language?

AFW: I mean value designations that are
placed on certain words—black visual coding. For instance--
Hollywood, for years, has not wanted to portray Africa Americans in
romantic relationships because it was believed they didn't have a
romantic life. Even African-American are guilty of decimating
themselves with Gangster Rap and Rap music lyrics. These can be
very destructive forces to African American—with its glorification,
violence and drugs.

DH: You are working on a play titled “
Grit” right now. I know the playwright August Wilson was an
influence on you—and he wrote a series of plays about Pittsburgh.
You are a native son of Baltimore—is this play going to be part of
a a series too?

AFW: I am not looking to write a
series. But I am looking to write a lot of plays about Baltimore. I
am also studying acting—to add to my skills as a playwright.

DH: What exactly is the play about?

AFW: I can only talk about the play,
generally. It involves generational shifts in demographics in the
city.

DH: You studied with the playwright
Paula Vogel at Brown University, right?

AFW: After my first two professional
play productions I basically concentrated on poetry. But I continued
to write poems when I went to Brown. Paula Vogel encouraged me
around playwrighting. Grit is in its second draft—it needs a
third. I am going to the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis to have
it looked at by accomplished playwrights who act as advisers.

DH: What is the new generation of
American poets emphasis on?

AFW: The younger poets are more
concerned with craft and the application of theory. But it is hard to
make a general statement.

Monday, August 03, 2015

Buell Hollister has a normal sized
head, but one of his main characters in his new novel “Leeram in
Fordlandia” has a decidedly shrunken one. Hollister, formerly the
head of the august St. Botolph Club in Boston, has written his first
novel “Leeram in Fordlandia.” I spoke with Hollister on my
Somerville Community Access TV show, “Poet to Poet: Writer to
Writer.”

Doug Holder: So how does a shrunken
head by the name of Leeram come into play in your novel?

Buell Hollister: At the beginning of
the book a shrunken head makes an appearance. Actually, this has some
basis of fact in my own life. A dentist friend of mine once showed me
a prized shrunken head in his possession, and then put it away. Over
the years I had the head in the back of my mind. A couple of years
ago I used the head as a starting point for a short story I wrote.
The protagonist in my novel Gilbert Greenbush helps the widow of the
dentist to clear out his possessions after his death. The head
happened to be high on the list of things she wanted to get rid of.
So Greenbush agreed to take it. And that’s where the story begins.
Greenbush keeps it around his house, and he slowly gets used to it.
He says to himself that it is a perfect roommate. It doesn’t drunk
his liquor and it doesn’t need food. Soon it becomes apparent that
the head has a personality—a wise guy, like a New York cabdriver.
And this head turns out to be a catalyst for change. Greenbush was
the type of guy who would have spent his life as a barista at some
out-of-the-way coffee shop—if not for this shrunken head.

DH: Was he fashioned after you at one
point in your life?

BH: Well…maybe for a short period of
time. I was jolted out of that state of inertia. This character is
someone with enormous potential but he needed a situation that would
propel him. Leeram was his alter ego.

DH: Also the women in his life
propelled him, right?

BH: Several did, Laura, who was
gorgeous and younger and Suxie, whois an Amazon. I envisioned Suxie
as being six feet five inches tall—a larger than life figure. She
has a very commanding presence. People do what she tells them to do.
He meets both of these women at an anti-fur protest, where the
protesters are wearing, literally nothing. Lisa and Gilbert wind up
as a couple and, Leeram and Suxie wind up as sort of a couple.

DH: They all wind up in Fordlandia in
Brazil.

BH: Fordlandia is
a real place, with a real history. Henry Ford of the Ford Motor
Company, wanted to have control over everything. They had their own
steel mills, etc… but they didn’t have their own rubber
production. So Ford decided to have a rubber plantation. He took the
plans for a typical Midwestern town: the architecture, the
bandstand, the church and transplanted it to the jungles in Brazil.
It was very strange. He believed that he could do this better than
the natives. It was a disaster; it never worked. He eventually gave
Fordlandia back to Brazil. So this band of friends in the novel
wanted to operate a self-sustaining community in this abandoned
space.

DH: You are 76 and this is your first
novel. What took you so long?

BH: I started to write short stories a
few years ago. At first I couldn’t get published; later I got
published in a number of literary magazines. Someone told me, “The
way you learn to write a novel, is to write a novel.” So I did. I
worked with a good editor. He helped me organize my work. And of
course I wanted to publish my novel. Publishers were telling me that
it was well written, but because it is so off the wall— they
wouldn’t be able to sell it. I found Merrimack Media. Since I was 76
I didn’t want to wait for years to publish. Most publishers stop
pushing a book after three months and it is put on the remainder
list. But a Merrimack book remains on sale, there are no deadlines; it
remains on Amazon. Now I am working on a sequel to the novel.

DH: You were president of the prominent
St. Botolph Club in Boston—a big supporter of the arts.

BH: The St. Botolph Club is an old,
venerable institution. There are many accomplished members. It is
located in the Back Bay of Boston on Commonwealth Ave. Its mission
centers on the arts. It celebrates visual arts, music, the written
word, etc… Such writers as Saul Bellow, as well as musicians like
Yo Yo Ma were members. There are also scientists who are members. I
can think one of one retired MIT physics professor, who is now into
sculpting. I was elected into the position. I had the time to do it,
and I found it very rewarding.

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Orpahned Words: Forgotten Poems For A Haphazard Life by R.D. Armstrong

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Last Night at the Wursthaus by Doug Holder

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Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur : 1974 to 1983 by Doug Holder

(To order click on picture) “Doug Holder is a poet of the old city, the city of our fathers, of the 1950s and later. Mr. Holder writes poems like notes in a diary. I found myself struck by their economy, wit, and urban melancholy... He has a voice unlike that of any of his contemporaries. Holder is a poet of the street and coffeehouses, an observer of the everyday. He writes of old Marxists, security guards and his relationship to his deceased father—themes of the common life. I am drawn to these poems as I am to the poetry of Philip Levine and the prose of James T. Farrell. But Holder’s poetry is deeper than that. He sees the world not for what it is, but on his own terms. He is living in the poem rather than in poetry.” ~ Sam Cornish, First Boston Poet Laureate

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OH Don't ,She Said..a poem/song project

( Preview and Purchase--click on pic) Oh Don’t, She Said ~ by Jennifer Matthews. Jennifer wrote this song after her friend and notable poet, Doug Holder, showed her his poem: “Oh don’t, she said, it’s cold.” After reading it, Jennifer felt inspired and heard a song in it. She had to change some of the words to make it work lyrically with the music, but she made sure to stay close to the original poem as much as possible. Jennifer played all the instruments on it and engineered it. It was mixed by Phil Greene at Normandy Sound, who worked with the likes of Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen and many, many other noted artists. Doug wrote it after a conversation he had with his mother while riding on a train to New York City. It is dedicated to her, Rita Holder. Genre: Rock: Acoustic Release Date: 2014

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So Spoke Penelope by Tino Villanueva

(Click on picture to order now!) "An intense poetic hovering over a situation of prolonged expectation....The poems in SO SPOKE PENELOPE are simply amazing, whether in the form of an apostrophe to the absent Odysseus or to the Gods, whether in a narrative past-tense mode or in the immediacy of the lived present, whether in the staccato of monosyllables or in the exuberance of unusual compounds, whether they employ Greek-feeling pentameter lines, alliteration, or anaphora. This poetic cycle shows that the whole range of human experience is contained in Penelope of Ithaca."—Werner Sollors

Visitors from around the country and world...( Click on real time view for complete list)

New From Muddy River Books: Eating Grief at 3AM" by Doug Holder

(To order click on picture) “There is a sad, sweet nostalgia in Holder’s Eating Grief at 3 AM, a sense of loss and sadness for the places and the people who were a part of those scenes: the hunchback, the Tennessee Williams’ half lost blondes, the turbaned men and the discarded move nostalgically through life. Yet Holder finds something almost like beauty or knowledge in the abandoned warehouses with weeds crawling to the roof. He imagines when Mrs. Plant, an old art teacher, was an enigmatic young woman ‘feverishly taking notes about the paintings, a love note stuffed in a pocket of her winter coat.’ There are always dreams, even if never fulfilled. There is so often the sense of time passing, of letting go-- letting go of people, letting go of Harvard Square Theater and the Wursthaus, balms that seemed like they would always be there. And they are and always will be in Holder’s moving poems.” — Lyn Lifshin, Author of Cold Comfort (Black Sparrow Press) "

Elizabeth Lund Interviews Doug Holder-Founder of the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

(Click on Picture to order) "Starting with Allen Ginsberg and ending with Charlie Parker, Sam Cornish takes us on a whirlwind tour of some of the livelier segments of 1950s and early ’60s American culture. With non-stop energy, syncopated rhythms, and a fast pace that keeps you humming as you turn the pages, Cornish visits a wide array of writers, musicians, and films, stopping along the way to visit local poetry scenes and pay tribute to the homeless and poor. Calling on Jack Kerouac, Langston Hughes, Marlon Brando, Miles Davis and a host of others, Cornish makes us feel the excitement of those times, even as he and his companions absorb the complex and often disturbing history of what he aptly calls “My Young America.” — Martha Collins

Read what people are saying about the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

click on pic for more info..... (Eric Darton, (bestselling author of 'Divided We Stand: A Biography of The World Trade Center): ' "...a terrific publication..." Diane Lockward ( New Jersey Council of the Arts Fellow and publisher of Tarapin Books)--"You provide an invaluable service for poets." Rusty Barnes ( Night Train magazine) "Doug. I know your reviewers have made a difference to me and my work. Keep up the good work". J.L. Morin ( Lecturer at Boston University/ Library Review) "That's a lovely blog you've got there, Doug Holder." ( Sherill Tippins--"Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel.") " I love your introduction, and fervently hope that Somerville never meets anything like the Chelsea Hotel's fate. It's always a pleasure to read your blog -- even when I'm not in it!" Alan Kaufman ( Editor of the "Outlaw Bible of American Literature")-- " ...a terrific blog..." Perry Glasser--( Winner of the Gival Press Novel Award): " The blog is very impressive." Elizabeth Swados ( Tony Nominated Playwright, Guggenheim Award Winner ): "Thanks you so much for this review on your blog. It helps so much, not just in terms of getting people to know that it exists, but also makes me feel that someone has gotten what I have tried to do. I wish you the very best." Marguerite G. Bouvard, PhD-- Resident Scholar Women's Research Center-Brandeis University: " I love reading your blog. What a refreshing respite from the New York Times. Thanks for all you do for poetry." Ed Hamilton--author of "Legends of the Chelsea Hotel" commenting on Chelsea Hotel article: " That's a great piece. Thanks for sending the link along." Richard Moore-- Finalist/T.S.Eliot Prize " I have just read your wonderful interview of the wonderful Eric Greinke!" Steven Ford Brown (Former Director of Research for the George Plimpton Interview Series "The Writer in America"): " You did a great job with the Clayton Eshleman interview, especially the personal stuff. So much better than doing the dry talk about literary polemics." Celia Gilbert (Pushcart Prize in Poetry) "Doug thanks so much for that fine shout out. I'm delighted how you put it all together!" Karen Alkalay-Gut, PhD ( Professor of English-Tel Aviv University) "Doug, I enjoy your posts immensely" Lise Haines ( Writer-in-Residence, Emerson College-Boston) "I love your blog!" "( Elizabeth Searle- Executive Board/Pen New England) : "Like your blog. I like the interview with Rick Moody." Ploughshares Staff- " Everyone at Ploughshares is a big fan of your blog." Suzanne Wise (Publicity Director Poets House-NYC): "Thank you so much for this wonderfully thoughtful portrait of our new home! You really "get us" and you translate that understanding vividly. I love the way you talk about Stanley's ( Kunitz) giant dictionary as a relic from another age. We're glad to preserve such relics." Kathleen Bitetti ( Chief Curator Medicine Wheel Productions/ Former Director of the Artists Foundation--Boston.) " Love your interview with Marc Zegans...wonderful blog!"

Ibbetson Street is now in a partnership with Endicott College!

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The Arts and Literature in Somerville, Mass.: Off the Shelf with Doug Holder

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The Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 13, 2010

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"The Paris of New England" Interviews with Poets and Writers" by Doug Holder

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No One Dies at the Au Bon Pain by Doug Holder

Poems of Boston and Just Beyond: From The Back Bay to the Back Ward by Doug Holder

A poetry collection that deals with Boston, and Holder's experiences working on the psychiatric units at McLean Hospital

Of All the Meals I Had Before by Doug Holder

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The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel (To order click on picture)

A new poetry book by Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene Founder, Doug Holder. "I'm enjoying 'The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel' -- perfect poems, especially in that ambiance." Dan Tobin -- Director of Creative Writing--Emerson College-Boston, Mass./ " It is quintessential Holder& bristles with sardonic wit. Congratulations."-- Eric Grienke (founder of Presa Press) / " I finished "The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel'...greatly enjoyed the menagerie of characters and imperfect human beings I met along the way. Excellent work Doug!"-- Paul Steve Stone ( Creative Director W.B.Mason and the autthor of "Or So It Seems.") / "I am reminded in the pages of this collection of meeting, a year or two before her death, the artist Alice Neel, who painted gorgeously surreal ironic portraits of famous and ordinary people in the 1930's and 40's--and shivering as she looked me over. Doug Holder looks at the world through a similarly sharp and amused set of eyes...Rich nuggets of humor and wry reflection throughout this collection." Pamela Annas ( Asst. Dean of Humanities U/Mass Boston/Reviewer Midwest Book Review) “....particularly liked The Tunnel—a little masterpiece!” Kathleen Spivack ( Permanent Visiting Professor of Creative Writing/American Literature at the University of Paris) "I want to tell you this was just about the best chap I ever read, I absolutely DEVORED it..."--( Robin Stratton--Boston Literary Magazine) "An acclaimed Boston-area poet writes about characters who have captured his interest over the years -- a colonial dame with purple hair, a postal worker ready to be returned to his sender, J. Edgar Hoover's secret love -- in this skillfull collection of short, free form poems." (Perkins School of the Blind Website) Click on picture to access Cervena Barva Press

About Me

Poems From The Left Bank: Somerville, Mass. by Doug Holder

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From The Paris of New England: Interviews with Poets and Writers" by Doug Holder

(Click on picture to order) Interviews by Doug Holder from the Paris of New England: Somerville, Mass. "I am impressed. A lot of great interviews compiled over the years."-- Brian Morrisey--Poesy Magazine / " A very engrossing read..."--Chiron Review / "Doug Holder knows how to ask important questions"--New Pages

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